5/5: Tom Waits' new three-disc collection Orphans is hands-down one of the year's best. Here, we look at the rough, aggressive, and blues-oriented opener, Brawlers.
In his artist statement for Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards (Anti- 2006) living legend Tom Waits writes that he and his songwriting partner and wife, Kathleen Brennan, wanted the record to be like “emptying our pockets on the table after an evening of gambling, burglary, and cow tipping.”
The result is a collection of fifty-six tracks—thirty of which have never been previously released—that for some reason or another never found their way onto one of Waits’ earlier albums.
For professing that the idea behind this album was one of housekeeping, release and even a sense of exhaustion (based on the above quote), Waits and Brennan’s songwriting is in no way worse for wear. In fact, Orphans will ultimately rank among the best efforts from a duo already known for their consistency and incomparable talent.
This album is so shockingly successful because Waits continues to strike an effective balance between innovation and his tried and true formula. The strength of his music has always been his gut-wrenching, sometimes unsettling lyrics and his penchant for musical experimentation.
On the first disc of this three-disc collection, subtitled “Brawlers,” Waits returns once again to his favorite subjects of heartache, murder and general destitute. As he has always done, however, tales of trains and stray dogs become intensely introspective examinations of modern life. “Bottom of the World,” for example, is a mandolin-driven meditation on wanderlust and loneliness that shows these songsmiths at their most symbolic.
When Waits warbles “I’m handcuffed to the bishop in the barbershop line / I’m lost at the bottom of the world,” the phrase forces the listener to consider an unorthodox connection between the profound and the mundane. And, of course, that everyone needs a haircut from time to time.
Musically, Tom Waits is hands-down the most aggressive musician composing today. By aggressive, I mean that he happily overturns traditional assumptions about music as if they were buckets of paint. The result is a intense and vibrant tapestry of sounds that somehow retains its ability to inspire toe-tapping and drunken sing-alongs.
Take “2:19.” Like many of the songs on this album, it follows a standard blues construction. However, because the story embedded in this song’s lyrics takes place in a train station, Waits incorporates steam whistles, a choo-choo chugging rhythm and the cold, heartless clank of steel on steel.
And yet, the song’s refrain is one of the catchiest on the entire three-disc set. With it’s “hey, hey, I will remember you…hey, hey, I don’t know what to do…My baby’s leaving on the 2:19,” the hook will drive itself into your brain like the last spike on a new railway line.
Tracks like the demonic gospel of “Lord, I’ve Been Changed,” the poignant political commentary “Road to Peace,” and the sugar-sweet opening track, “Lie To Me” reveal that Waits remains at height of his performing power.
As we examine the two remaining discs in the coming days, it will become evident that Waits continues to write music in another dimension. The way he constructs a rhythm, a melody, and the overall “anatomy” of a song (as he calls it) continues to appear partly foreign, partly familiar, and in the end, a creation that emerges as a stark, unflinching examination of the human condition.
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